


Holy Hell, I Love You

by wrenkle



Category: Lucifer (Figure), Persephone (Goddess)
Genre: F/M, Love Story, Lucifer - Freeform, Modern AU, Persephone - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23600353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrenkle/pseuds/wrenkle
Summary: A modern au of sorts about the love story of the goddess Persephone and Lucifer Morningstar. ***VERY SHORT***





	1. Prologue

I am not what they have told you I am. I do not lead legions of demonic angels in a fiery pit filled with the tortured moans of your kind. I have never been that.  
I ran from Heaven, that is true, but not for the reasons that they say. I did not leave because my pride was hurt, or because I wanted more power. I left because I didn’t believe in Him anymore. He wasn’t the leader I thought he was.  
Who He was at the beginning was entirely different from who He is now. He used to care about your kind in ways that never made sense to any of us, but I get it now. Now that he no longer does. In every way, he has set the clock of your universe and walked away from it, letting the time tick down on its own.  
I don’t think I was supposed to develop compassion for your kind. We were made to keep Him company, not to disagree with his decisions or care for you. But I do disagree with him and I do care for your kind, as do many others.  
It happened when we defied His wishes and looked down at you for the first time. None of us were prepared for what we saw.  
Given His callous abandonment of you, we assumed that you were a failure. Some stain marring His so-called perfect creation strategy. You were not that.  
You were wild, vivid, and lively. Gloomy, petulant, and hateful. Kind, compassionate, and selfless. You were all of it and none of it at once, and we were not prepared for what that did to us.  
We had always been cold and emotionless, much like He was now. I think he made us that way so that He felt better about His inner darknesses. But seeing you down there awakened the emotions within us. We were not emotionless, we were emotionally blocked, and seeing you tore down the floodgates and allowed for the biggest flood of emotion possible.  
When we jumped down to join you, it was not with contempt for Him. Some of us stayed behind, not because they did not feel what we now felt, but because those new feelings meant that we could not bear to leave Him alone, after everything.  
A long time has passed since then, and some of us have corrupted. That is why you know this story differently than I have told it. They had to spin the tale so that we were evil and prideful so that their own pain at not leaving did not overtake them. He allowed them to enter the minds of your kind, and force them to write down false perceptions and spread them across your cultures. A defense against what was never an attack. He never called out to us, only sent them down to pervert our motives and crush our relationships with you.  
There was a time when your people feared us because of those stories. You called us demons, as they had told you we were. You called me Satan, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles, but I am Lucifer Morningstar, and you were lied to.


	2. Lou

It’s a Tuesday and Lou is enjoying his morning coffee, as he does every single day of the week without fail. He only allows himself a single cup and doesn’t add cream or sugar to the dark liquid, but sometimes he can be seen shaking a moderate amount of cinnamon into his cup. Today is a cinnamon day.   
His girlfriend, Seph, saunters out of their bedroom, her pink hair mussed from sleep. “Good morning, lovely,” he says to her. She grunts in response, grabbing her own mug from its space on the counter and slapping a tea bag into it. She pulls the kettle off the stovetop, fills it with water from the sink, and clunks it back down onto the stove eye.   
She stumbles over to where he sits on the barstool, stepping between his thighs and crashing her face into his shoulder. She smells like lavender and the scent wraps itself around him like a blanket. She is always this tired in the mornings, no matter what time of day she wakes up. A foreign concept to Lou; he wakes up at 6:30 am every day of the week, even weekends.   
The tea kettle whines from the stovetop and she detaches herself from him to grab it. She pours the steaming hot water into her mug, the scent of bergamot tea filling the kitchen. She gathers the mug into her small hands and wanders back to the bedroom, leaving Lou to his silence again.   
This is their morning routine and he is fond of it. In about an hour, Seph will re-emerge and wander downstairs to the bookshop. She owns Plants and Prose, but doesn’t open it until 10 am each day. Lou is thankful for this. He never thinks more clearly than when he is awake and she is sleeping peacefully in the other room.   
Their morning routine affords him almost three hours of uninterrupted time for himself. Usually, he uses it to sketch out his next painting. This morning, he’s been sketching a portrait of Seph standing in their kitchen. She looks remarkably similar to the way she looked before she left the kitchen just now.


	3. Seph

Persephone hates mornings. She admires Lou’s ability to awaken before the sun each day, but she has no desire to join him in that endeavor. Seph is perfectly happy to wake up at precisely 9:00 am, drink her first mug of tea in the bed, and be dressed and down at the shop by 10.   
Today is no different. Having finished her tea, she stands in front of her wardrobe, staring the clothing down with her arms crossed. Finally, she settles on a soft pink sweater and a pair of ripped, baggy jeans. She pulls the sweater over her head and steps into the jeans and then cuffing them slightly above her ankles.   
Seph pads back out into their kitchen. Lou is still seated at their counter, absorbed in his sketchpad. She walks over to him and kisses him lightly on the top of his head before descending the staircase into her shop.   
Every day, the first thing Seph does fling all of the curtains open and slide the screen on the front door up to let in the crisp outside air. The plants need the sunlight, yes, but Seph needs it more than they do. The warm light of it seems to ignite her, filling her with the energy she needs to get everything sorted before opening. Sliding the deliveries in from the sidewalk, she unpackages each new book and slaps a plant-shaped price sticker on it. She flits all about the space, placing the books into their proper shelves and straightening the long runners between each large bookcase, before carefully flipping the sign to OPEN at exactly 10:01 am.


	4. Lou

He’d been working on these few sketches for months now, careful to keep them hidden from Seph. He wanted everything to be just right, but so far he hadn’t been able to create anything he didn’t immediately want to toss in the trash. At first, he’d toyed with making a sketch of the two of them together, but each time he drew himself he wanted to color his skin red and throw a pair of horns on his head. Keeping this secret from her ate at him and those feelings of guilt seemed to present themselves most often in his art.  
Exasperated, he had begun sketching only her. Seph is his favorite thing to draw, but he can never seem to get things to look _right_. Somehow, the soft warmth of her just doesn’t translate onto the page. Lou felt that way now, as he crumpled up yet another sketch and tossed it into the kitchen trash can. He was surprised to find that the can was not yet absolutely overflowing with tiny, crumpled balls of sketch paper.  
He just wanted to propose to her, that was it. He was hoping he could do it with something he made for her, but as time had ticked by, it felt more and more like that would not be happening. But the idea of getting on one knee in front of her, of _asking_ her, terrified him. What if, as he knelt before her, she suddenly realized the truth about him? What if she didn’t? Could he live with himself if he never told her the truth?  
Lou laid his head down on the counter, the smooth tiles cool against his cheek. _Being an angel was easier than this_ , he thought.


	5. Seph

Things at the shop had been strangely busy. Seph had barely had time to sit down behind the counter before more customers came up, asking questions or wanting to purchase something. One woman had come in around noon and had marvelled over Seph’s plants. “They’re so alive! And in the dead of winter, no less!” she had said. Seph’s plants were her pride and joy. She took painstaking steps to keep them healthy and happy, regardless of the season. Nevermind that having the heat on high for them all winter was an expensive endeavor.  
Turning the sign over to CLOSED, Seph began to wonder what Lou would want for dinner. She loves to cook, but she loves to cook for Lou even more. He’s always so complimentary of her cooking, even though she knows she’s not the best at it. When she had burnt his birthday cake last year, his laughter had been the only thing that kept her from throwing the entire stove out their apartment window and onto the street below. Lou, the saint, had scraped the charred edges off of the cake, plastered the whole thing in icing, and eaten it anyway.  
Perhaps tonight they would just order take-out from the Thai place down the street. Seph usually wouldn’t let Lou call anything in unless it was a special occasion, but today could be special. _Thai Tuesday, Take-out Tuesday, both of those could work_ , she thought as she headed up the stairs into their apartment.


	6. Lou

That night, Lou lay curled around Seph, his thoughts racing. Listening to her breathing usually helped him calm down and he focused in on the sound. _I’m okay. I’m in bed with Seph in our apartment. It’s not happening again._ He thought to himself. It was his mantra for getting through these moments, moments when the Fall still plagued him. He didn’t regret his choice, especially since it brought him to her, but at night, flashbacks filled his mind.  
He pressed himself closer to her and nuzzled his face into her soft curls. _I’m okay. I’m in bed with Seph in our apartment. It’s not happening again._  
Somehow, he managed to fall back asleep and when he awoke again, it was to his alarm. Carefully, he slid himself out of Seph’s arms and the comfort of their bed and made his way out into the kitchen to start up the coffee pot.  
While he waited, he opened his sketchbook to a fresh page and grabbed a pencil from the cup on the counter. “Oh, fuck it,” he muttered to himself. He was never going to be able to say the words, but he wanted this so badly and he was tired of waiting on himself. Hastily, he scribbled out the words, ripped the page from the pad, and stuffed it into Seph’s tea container. He pulled open the cabinet above the fridge, the one Seph could never reach, and pulled the ring from its hiding place. As he stared down at the small gemstone, he pondered whether he wanted to become engaged in his pajamas.


	7. Both

She stood alone in their bathroom, peering down at the two pink lines glaring up at her from the plastic stick on the counter. “Lou!” she called out to him, grabbing the test off the counter and clutching it in her fist. Her voice must have sounded as panicked as she felt, because Lou came tearing through the door to their bedroom with a pot in his hand like a weapon. “Honey?!” he yelled, screeching to a halt in front of the bathroom door.   
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he said, his eyes scanning her slight figure for any sign of injury. Stiffly, she held the test out to him. “Wha— Oh.” he said, taking it from her hands. He turned the test over in his hands, glancing down at the tiny window and the two pink lines there. A few moments passed, and he continued staring down at it, pot-weapon forgotten on the counter. “This… You can’t… We can’t…” he mumbled, as he walked out of the bathroom and sat down heavily on the end of their bed. He laid the test carefully on the comforter and put his head in his hands, fisting his hair.   
“Lou?” she said, tears pricking in her eyes. “I thought you’d be excited…”   
He glanced up at her, eyes wide like a scared animal. “Why would I be excited?! This thing could kill you!”   
“Wh— What?” she said, disbelief on her face. “Honey, people get pregnant all the time and while there are some risks, it’s usually not an issue…” she trailed off.   
“People pregnant with BABIES, yeah. That thing is not a baby. It never should have happened” he said, refusing to even make eye contact with her. He stared down at the hardwood floor, as if he hoped a hole would appear in it to disappear through. “Lou…” she said, voice breaking. “It’s our baby. I don’t understand… Is there something wrong with me?” She was fully crying now, great globular tears sliding down her too-pink cheeks.   
“Oh, shit, baby. That’s not what I was saying.” he said, standing abruptly and wrapping himself around her. “It’s not you. It’s me.”   
“What?” she said, sniffling against his shoulder.  
“This isn’t how I wanted this to happen, but there’s something I need to tell you…”   
It took him nearly an hour to explain it all, crying and laughing at different points throughout. “I thought you had surgery!” she had said when he told her what the scars on his shoulders had really been from. “Good god, Lou, no wonder you have nightmares!” The irony of her saying “Good god” had made them both laugh. What had been difficult, though, was explaining why he was so afraid of this pregnancy. She had thought he was just nervous and had responded really poorly, but it was more than that. Because he was an angel, and a damned one at that, he had no way of knowing what would happen if he had children with a human. With her. Of course he wanted this with her, he was just afraid of things going wrong.   
“Hey, honey, um… This is kind of a weird moment, but go open your tea tin,” he said. “Oooookay…” she said, laughing as she walked to the kitchen.   
He stood, following behind her. As she removed the lid off the tea container, he pulled the ring from his pocket and knelt down. A second passed as she read over the slip of paper. A small squeak escaped her lips as she whirled around to face him. “YES!” she said, crashing into him and toppling them both over onto the ground. Laughing, he rolled out from under her and sat up, still clutching the ring box. “Hey, babe, do you want this or ... ?” he said, chuckling at her. “Do I want it?! Give it!” she said, like a particularly greedy little goblin.   
He flipped the box open and held it out to her. Inside the box sat a silver ring with leaf shapes wrapping delicately around the band and a modest green gemstone nestled along the top. Fast as lightning, she snatched the ring from the box and stuck it on her left ring finger. “I love you,” she said. “I love us.” She crumpled her body against his again, nestling her head into his neck and shoulder. “I love you too, Seph,” he said into her hair.

————————— 

Lou had been wrong about their baby. Their first appointment had confirmed that things were entirely normal, despite his immense anxiety that the nurse would find something and he would have to hide from security or some such nonsense. That had not been the case and Seph was quite smug about it. “I told you,” she said as they walked up the stairs into their apartment.   
“You can’t hold this against me. I was just worried about you!” he said, slightly exasperated.   
“I know, sweetpea. But I’m fine and so is our little sprout,” she said, rubbing her stomach gently.   
She sat down at the kitchen counter and flipped open the large binder she had left there. “So, I was thinking, what about poppies for the bouquets?” she asked. “Darling, the floral arrangements are all you. But.. I don’t suppose I would mind a red flower,” he replied, pulling the scarf from around his neck and hanging it on the coat hook. He shrugged out of his coat and placed it on the hook as well before asking, “Are you certain you want a Christmas wedding?”   
“I don’t want to be huge in my dress!” she said. “It has to be soon or I won’t be able to tell my dad we waited!”   
He laughed and said, “He’s going to find out eventually, honey.”   
“Yes, but he can find out after we’re married. And not a second before!”  
She went back to gazing down into the massive binder, scribbling little notes and tapping her small feet along the footrest of the barstool. He walked into their bathroom and shut the door before staring at his reflection in the mirror. He had never thought this much happiness would be possible for him. He had chosen to fall, because he saw the goodness in the human beings down here, but he had always assumed that he would never find the true joy that he saw on their faces. Yet here he stood, engaged to the love of his life and the mother of his unborn child, smiling so hard it almost hurt. All of this, Seph, the baby, this life, all of it was worth everything it had cost him. He would choose having his wings ripped from his body and plummeting to the earth every time if this was what would come from it.   
“Hey, babe,” she called from the kitchen. “Do you want to get Thai food?” 

—————————

“LOU!” she yelled from the bathroom. She was standing over the bathroom rug, her water having just broken and covered the worn fabric in liquid. He came hurtling through the bathroom door to his wife, hands immediately going around her waist to steady her. “Is it time?” he asked.   
“The midwife said to go once my water broke and… Yes, it’s time,” she said. “Will you grab me some clean pants?”   
Her husband nodded and scrambled out of the bathroom towards her wardrobe, dragging out a pair of soft grey leggings and digging a pair of her underwear from the drawer. “Here, baby,” he said, handing them to her. “Do you need help?”   
“Yes, please. I can’t bend.” she said.   
Quickly, he helped her pull the now sopping wet clothing off before handing her the towel off the rack beside them. As she wiped her legs dry, he got her underwear and leggings ready to be stepped into and pulled up as one unit. Once dressed, he walked her out into the bedroom and eased her onto their bed. “Give me one second, lovely, and I’ll have your bag packed.” While she waited, he flew around their bedroom gathering the things on the list she had written for him nearly a month ago. It had been tucked in the corner of their bathroom mirror waiting for this moment to arrive.   
“Do you want me to pack your fuzzy socks?” he asked, stuffing several pairs of underwear into her light pink duffle bag. “Yes, but grab the slippers too!” she said.   
Thirty-seven minutes later, they were bundled up in the Uber on their way to the hospital. It was strange to take an Uber to the hospital for a birth, but walking was not an option with Seph in her current state. The contractions had set in and Lou’s left hand was suffering mercilessly for it, squeezed in her small fist.   
As they pulled into the valet lane of the hospital, Lou unbuckled his seat belt and Seph’s and jerked their bag up and onto his back. When the car came to a stop, he thanked the driver and flung the door wide open. He stepped out and grabbed his now-groaning wife into his arms, carrying her into the building as quickly as his body would allow. “Excuse me! My wife is in labor!” he called to the nurse at the reception area. The nurse called over the intercom and another nurse came around the corner with a wheelchair. He placed Seph carefully into it and he, Seph, and the nurse hastened into one of the labor and delivery rooms. 

—————————

Sixteen hours later, their sweet little sapling finally made her appearance. To Lou’s utter delight, she looked just like her mother. Her tiny eyelashes fluttered softly and Lou’s heart soared. He glanced down at his wife and for a moment, it was just their little family in the whole world.   
“I love you,” he said. “And I you,” she replied, smiling broadly at her husband.   
“What do we name her?” she whispered to him, not wanting the nurses to know they hadn’t already decided.   
“What about Lily?”


End file.
